Protesters at ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ D.C. premiere

The debate surrounding the American military’s use of torture has followed the theatrical version of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden — and that continued right through the film’s Washington, D.C., premiere.

As soon as director Kathryn Bigelow walked onto the red carpet inside the Newseum where her film “Zero Dark Thirty” was being shown on Tuesday, about thirty anti-torture protestors stood just steps away from her.

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They dressed as prisoners of war, wearing orange jumpsuits and their faces covered in black fabric, similar to the terrorists depicted in Bigelow’s film. Event staff covered the Newseum’s windows with black fabric so that they wouldn’t distract from the red carpet.

Straight from Hollywood and onto Capitol Hill, the film has reignited the contentious torture debate. In one scene, a prisoner is waterboarded by CIA agents. In another, agents cram that same prisoner into water-cooler sized crate and later force him to walk like a dog.

Critics say the film leads the audience to believe that torture works — since the mission depicted in the movie was ultimately successful in real life and bin Laden is dead. But Bigelow told POLITICO she wasn’t trying to endorse a position, just start a conversation.

“I think what’s important to remember is it’s a movie and not a documentary. It’s just a movie. It’s a dramatization of a 10-year manhunt compressed into two-and-a-half hours,” she said.

She continued: “There’s a lot of compressions, there’s a lot of composite characters and it’s an interpretation — and again, it’s not a documentary.”

Following the premiere, ABC News reporter Martha Raddatz led a panel with screenwriter Mark Boal, among others.

“The movie has become — in this city — very much about torture,” Raddatz said on the panel.

Politicians and leaders, including acting CIA director Michael Morell, have criticized the film for its depiction of the military’s interrogation techniques.

“I think Kathryn was really pretty gutsy to put on the screen what she did put on the screen,” Boal said on the panel. “The fact that she was willing to tackle that and not shy away from that part of history, I’m very proud of her that she did that.”

The Senate has even launched a probe into how the filmmakers got their information about the raid.

“I know Mark is a first-rate investigative reporter, but I don’t know how Mark got his information. I know I was certainly frustrated that I wasn’t getting the same kind of information at the time,” Raddatz said, asking about how Boal went about researching the film.

He said he read books and news accounts.

“I also did some of my own independent reporting as well,” he said. “At the end of the day that’s research, and the research was put into a pile and I had to write a screenplay.”

The goal?

“You’re making something that’s hopefully a dramatic work and stands on its own as a movie-going experience but that also hopefully stands the test of time — maybe not this news cycle, but that stands the test of time as the years go on and people will look back on it and say, ‘You know, that really did capture something about the War on Terror or the issues this country faced or the way that Osama Bin Laden was prosecuted,’” Boal said.